metastatic
by gunkissed
Summary: "Ryuk knows what will happen to Light. Sometimes L thinks he sees the numbers reflected in his eyes." l/light, sickfic, written for a prompt meme on tumblr.


metastatic

summary: "Ryuk knows what will happen to Light. Sometimes L thinks he sees the numbers reflected in his eyes." l/light, sickfic, written for a prompt meme on tumblr.

rated: T, or M. i'm not entirely sure.

trigger warnings: hospital unpleasantness (needles, etc), existential dread, and, true to canon, death.

* * *

It begins on a grey morning, of course.

The couple are fighting, as they are wont to do, tangled limbs and insults too fast to comprehend, and it's not that they hate one another, but that when tensions rise they aren't too sure of what else there is to do. They are young, newly embarking on this attempt at proper cohabitation, and they are learning.

Somewhere in the scrap, L, half laughing, spots an opportunity. He sticks out a bare foot, catches the hem of Light's jeans, an elegant shin, and sends the boy tumbling to the ground. Then he too falls, purposefully this time, and begins to playfully tickle the younger from his spread-eagled position on the floor.

But Light writhes and doesn't giggle.

"Stop L, wait a second – L I'm being serious, fucking get off of me it hurts!"

At the urgency in his voice, L springs to one side and retains a façade of calm despite the fact that things feel suddenly, stiflingly wrong.

"Oh, you're not going to cry are you? Not just because I won?"

Light says nothing, sitting up by using one arm gingerly and one not at all. Then, he stares at the unused hand in his lap as if a foreign object had suddenly fallen from the sky and into his possession.

And the both of them, they've had quite enough of that. In the distance, a god of death laughs with a sound as grating as the bruises ballooning out to pattern their skin simultaneously.

"I don't think I can move my fingers."

L gulps. He hadn't meant to _really_ hurt him.

* * *

Later on, Light will note that as they drive to the hospital with Watari as the chauffeur and L apologising in the background, that the sky is as moody and cliché as in some lifetime movie right after the protagonist makes an important, but ultimately tragic, discovery.

Tragic indeed. He has lost the use of his writing hand.

"An abject shame," L says when he brings it up, eyes rolling upward to the sky and all the worlds that lay beyond it.

The waiting room has the mind-numbing scent of antibacterial spray and latex gloves. Actually, Light decides as they walk to the x-ray department, the entire hospital likely smells this way. Probably even the cafeteria. He makes a mental note to make L take him out for dinner later as an apology. Somewhere nice, but not too overtly posh, since he'll probably have a sling on his arm at best and not even his most expensive suit can make that look flashy.

"We're going to _Rules _tonight, Ryuuzaki." He stresses the alias.

"Ah. London's oldest restaurant."

"Yes, Ryuuzaki. Dress nice."

L gestures to the motionless arm, which lies at an odd angle, held still by a quiet man in a nurse's uniform.

"We're quite friendly with the chef there. She might ask where you got that."

"Oh, you mean Wedy? Yes, she might, and I shall tell her the truth, which is that you threw me to the ground in a fit of childish angst."

The nurse glances between the two of them worriedly, but busies himself with finishing the x-ray rather than making any sort of a comment.

* * *

After they have waited over thirty minutes for Light's wrist to be dressed, he begins to get antsy.

"Fucking England and your fucking NHS," he whispers to L, sitting next to an old lady in a duffle coat who seems to be nursing a dislocated thumb. "I mean, this is ridiculous. I don't see why you couldn't just get us some real health insurance instead of insisting _this_ was a better idea. In Japan you don't wait thirty minutes for a plaster cast, but then I guess in _Japan _I wouldn't have known anyway because there weren't any mad boyfriends running around trying to bash my fucking head in."

L shifts, says, "I refuse to contribute to the downfall of the only safety net the poor have for medical aid by choosing another, similarly flawed system so that you don't have to wait an extra fifteen minutes for a cast."

"You _broke _my wrist!"

A wry smile, "Maybe if it was your humerus you'd find it funnier."

"Shut up. What if the cast goes all itchy and smelly and you don't want to go near me for-"

"-Excuse me?"

The nurse is back.

"Mr. Yagami, there is a doctor who would like to see you in her office. Your, uh, your partner-" here, he glances shiftily at L, who rolls his eyes, "-can come too, if you'd like."

"Is the doctor going to give me a plaster cast in her office?" Light sneers, a single eyebrow raised. L considers scoffing at the boy's rudeness, then realises that actually, something like that happening in a doctor's office _is_ quite strange, and then he mirrors Light instead.

"It's a possibility," replies the nurse, smiling uneasily, "please, follow me."

* * *

The doctor introduces herself as Dorri Asadi. From her name, L's best guess is that she is Iranian. She has a gentle tone of voice, clipped nails and hair pulled back into a bun.

"Please excuse the wait for your plaster cast, Mr. Yagami. Hopefully, this conversation won't take up too much more of your time."

Light says nothing, but nods, as he and L plant themselves on chairs opposite her desk. The room is oddly dim for a formal setting, with the blinds drawn halfway closed and the only other source of light coming from a desk lamp. An ambience of quiet fear has drawn itself up into the space between where the two men sit.

Doctor Asadi opens a file containing Light's x-ray, and lays it out flat on the desk for them to look at.

"The reason we haven't been able to dress your wrist just yet is because we have spotted some abnormalities in this first x-ray here. Mr. Yagami, this may be considered a private matter, so if you would like to speak about this privately…"

"I want Ryuuzaki to stay. You want to stay, right?"

L nods. "I want to stay."

"Alright," nods Asadi. She pulls a pen from her lab coat pocket and clicks it a few times before using it as a pointer on the x-ray.

"As you can see, here is the fracture of your radius, approximately three inches below your thumb. However, if you look here," she gestures a further few centimetres closer to the elbow, "you can spot a mass very close to the bone. This is the abnormality."

"What does that mean?" L asks, before he can stop himself.

Asadi glances up at him and Light for a moment before her eyes return to the x-ray.

"We would like to run another x-ray before giving you your cast. We also think it would be best to give you a blood test before you go. If you go back out into the waiting room, the nurse can take care of that. You should be notified of the results within a week."

"But what does this mean?" asks Light, "You haven't said that."

"It can really be very difficult to tell what masses such like this are, whilst just looking at an x-ray. It could be a multitude of things – a fat deposit, a cyst, a benign tumour, anything. But we need to cover all of the bases, so the blood test should help clear it up for us as to what this may be."

They thank her, and go back to the waiting room in silence.

* * *

"But what if there is something properly wrong?" Light says to L in the car ride home. Watari retains his façade of oblivion despite his perfect hearing of the hushed conversation taking place behind him.

"Then we'll figure out where to go from there."

* * *

A week nearly passes. On the sixth day since the first meeting, Asadi phones them up and invites them in "for a chat".

When they leave the hospital for the second time, it is with details of an appointment on the following morning, for a biopsy of the thing sitting in Light's arm.

After they arrive back home, slightly shell shocked, joking too loudly with nervous laughter ringing in their ears, Light decides to google the doctor.

_Dr. Dorri Asadi MBBS, Oncology._

The laughter stops.

"She's an oncologist," he says to L, who is studying the appointment slip from across the room, "She has been all along. I've been seeing an oncologist all along."

* * *

The hospital cafeteria is disgusting and buzzing with life.

Light's hands shake around his coffee.

"I'm claustrophobic, L." He hisses over the table.

"Maybe you shouldn't be having caffeine before an MRI, then," the detective replies dully.

The first time he was here, he didn't want to ever enter the hospital café. Why would he? He wasn't a sick person, he was just stopping by because L got a little too excited during one of their little brawls, and that night he was going to go to _Rules _and order the most expensive shit on the menu and tease L openly with Wedy.

They never did go to _Rules, _and he doesn't quite feel like it now. Meanwhile, Wedy hasn't called in around two months. They're all going their separate ways so soon after the case, and here Light is, stuck in this shitty little café drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup and waiting for the test that shall predict the extent of his doom.

None of it feels real.

"It's terrible, anyway." he mutters, placing it back down on the table without even a coaster. "Instant."

Another eye roll from L. "You poor thing."

Truth is, the detective doesn't know how to behave, or what to say. There is no kind or tactful way to say "I'm sorry that there is a cancerous tumour in your arm that I happened to break, and your blood is in a right state and you have to sit in a cramped machine for an hour whilst people look for quiet death inside you." So he just doesn't, and he stays quiet and sardonic even though he cares. Light knows it, and he knows Light knows it, but that doesn't make his silence excusable in its own right. He is overwhelmed by the fact that he should _be there _but he doesn't know how.

If Watari was here he would know what to do, but Watari knows the bare minimum at Light's request – _"I don't need his pity!" _- and Watari only drives them to and from appointments and the only real company they have other than one another is a massive god of death on the other side of the room, stealing apples from trays when nobody is looking. It is a bit lonely.

Ryuk knows what will happen to Light. Sometimes L thinks he sees the numbers reflected in his eyes.

"It'll be alright," L says pathetically, placing his hand on Light's unharmed wrist.

Light pulls away.

* * *

"So," begins Asadi, "we're here today to go over the results of your MRI scan and discuss your options."

L thinks the sounds a little too chipper for this time in the morning. All he's had to eat so far is a bag of chocolate coated peanuts from a vending machine in the hallway and it shows in the way his slouch is more pronounced than usual. Light, however, is ramrod straight, foot bobbing, rubbing his neck impatiently as he waits for the good doctor to begin speaking. L doesn't think he's eaten at all yet, actually. He should probably be paying more attention to that. Fuck.

"Now, Mr. Yagami, we have come to a diagnosis for you."

"Okay." Light's voice is strained but not afraid or small – more annoyed than anything else.

"I'll say this as it is, because beating around the bush causes more harm than good with clients of your nature. It seems you have a rather aggressive form of osteosarcoma, which is a cancer of the bones. The MRI scan found multiple tumours alongside the one in your right wrist, including one in your pelvic bone, one in your left femur, and a very small one that you needn't worry about right now at the base of your spine."

"You spoke for exactly forty seconds just then," says Light, as the world jolts and he misses a second.

"Well, alright. I hardly see how that is significant. Did you hear me?"

Light looks down at his lap, swallows heavily and blinks a few times. L wonders if he should reach out, but how can he when his own hands are sweating?

"Yes, I heard you. I'm sorry. Why don't I need to worry about the one in my spine?"

The doctor relaxes a little in her chair as the topic of conversation returns back to something she can help with.

"It really is very small. We're hoping it will go away with chemotherapy."

"Chemotherapy?" L asks.

"Chemotherapy," Light says, as if he knew all along, "alright then."

L is about to speak, but then:

"Is that all?" Light asks, standing.

"Well, no. We still need to arrange dates for treatment and such. If you would like, I can book you both in to use the oncology ward's counselling service, while we're at it. There is really no shame in that, and it does help people come to terms with their diagnoses."

They arrange dates, hurriedly, and Light denies the counselling service just so he can leave and then L denies it too because he doesn't want to appear weak when he should be being anything but that. But he can't stop thinking about Ryuk waking him up laughing as they sleep, and about how the world suddenly feels as if it has jarred and his shopping bags have broken and tinned fruit has spilled out all over the pavement.

They are quiet on the way home again, as if all oxygen has been sucked from the car.

* * *

By the third round of chemotherapy, it begins to feel as if they're mastering the art. Since the rusty silence that built up around them after the diagnosis began to dissipate as Light threw up more and slept less, L feels more able to take care of things. They speak in riddles a lot of the time, speak of love or something close to it through insults and swear words, and somehow through that Light manages to express what he needs and most of the time, L manages to pull through with it. Once again, they are learning.

The night before the third round, Light is so annoyed by the patches of scalp showing through his hair that he demands L help him take it all off, and so L does.

"_I look like a thug, and my head is cold."_

"_I'll buy you a balaclava."_

The next day they show up at the hospital with two bottles of ginger ale, a pack of sugar free gum, two books and a bare head. Light had considered wearing a hat, until L told him bluntly that shame didn't suit him and he should put it away.

Light thanked him for that, and meant it.

The third round is significantly less glamorous than the first, in which Light had shown up in jeans and a designer jumper, and had sat neatly on the edge of his seat as if he were a model who just happened to have an IV drip in his arm. L had hovered nearby, asking in shy tones if he needed anything, and each time Light had responded with a clipped "no thank you."

The second time, the jeans stuck to his legs because of the sweating, and he couldn't reach the bowl in time so he threw up on his nice shirt. When L asked if he needed anything, he said "pour some water, get a tissue and remind me to bring my fucking toothbrush next time."

He fell asleep with his head on L's lap during the car ride home, and caught the detective trying to stealthily brush the hair off of his jeans on the way in.

This time, he is wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt. He takes off his trainers when they get to the chemotherapy room and sits with his legs crossed up on the seat.

"Which book do you want to read?" L asks.

"I'm not really in the mood for a book. Are you in the mood for a book?"

"Not particularly, but then what else can we do?"

"I wish we could watch a movie in here. We ought to bring the laptop next time."

They are learning.

* * *

"L," Light groans, "Hey, wake up."

It is four in the morning. L is sleeping for the first night in three. Groggily, after much prodding from Light, he sits up.

"I'm really sorry L, I know you're trying to sleep but I'm so thirsty and sort-of dizzy and I really think I need a glass of water or something." His words slur together with a drunken lack of precision.

"It's alright," L flicks on the bedside lamp and squints at Light. The boy's complexion is pale with a sheen of sweat, and his lips are cracked. The detective makes him sit up for a moment so that he can feel his forehead and flip the pillow over onto its cool side.

"You have a fever. I'll get you some water and ice to chew on and if you still feel bad later on in the morning, we can call Dr. Asadi just to be sure."

Light sighs as he puts his head back onto the now fresh pillow.

When L gets back from the kitchen with a jug of cold water and a bowl of ice, he finds Light half-asleep with his face pressed into L's side of the bed. The boy takes the glass of water when it is offered and drinks it in sips despite his want to gulp it all down. Lately, even holding down water can prove difficult if he drinks it wrong.

Still, Asadi said that if the side effects of chemotherapy are strong, that means it must be working. He hopes to Hell that she's right as he falls asleep again with his head tucked into the crook of L's neck.

The fever doesn't break, and the next afternoon he sits in the downstairs lounge, shivering as he waits for Asadi to make a house call. Watari comes by at one point with cool tea and honey, and takes his temperature. He isn't told the exact number, but judging by the grim face of Watari, it can't be good.

He still doesn't like that Watari knows, but really, the old man knew all along anyway, with or without being told.

L is working upstairs, having a voice call with some prominent politician in America. Light wishes America would be quiet so that he could exercise his talent for being clingy.

Still, L has to work. Light still works. The world doesn't stop for cancer, and Light doesn't want it to, because then who would solve crime? Without Kira on the case, at least, not in his original and far superior form, the crime rate has managed to skyrocket again worldwide.

So he calls it quits for one year and ends up with cancer and a partner who ignores him for a voice call with America. Okay.

Because he'd rather not think about that, he switches on the TV and watches half a rerun of _The Hour. _

"Why is it always the good shows that end up cancelled?" he calls into the hallway as L rushes downstairs to get the door.

* * *

He is in a hospital bed, properly this time, with the blankets pulled up to his chest and saline solution dripping through the picc line into his arm.

Up until now, he's managed to avoid hospital beds. Momentarily, for his first biopsy, he had sat on one, but that was it. This feels like a distinct setback.

There is a nurse in the room, short and female with a blonde bob and a large nose. Something about his wooziness makes looking at her uncomfortable, as if she may snap or scowl at him at any moment, so he keeps his eyes cast down, peering over at L's elbow where it rests on the side of the bed. The man is cradling his head as the nurse describes to him the process of a lumbar puncture and asks him if he wouldn't mind staying in the room throughout it.

"Of course not, no," he mutters, grimacing, "what can I do to help?"

She gestures to the side of the bed closest to the wall.

"Just standing here will be fine. He might need a hand to hold, that's all. Mr. Yagami, if you could just lay on your side now and face Ryuuzaki, that would be lovely."

Light scoffs before turning. After all he has done - the lives he has saved and taken away - the fact that anybody believes he may need a hand to hold is amusing.

"The lumbar puncture will be moderately uncomfortable," says the nurse, as she rubs antiseptic fluid on the plane of skin left bare by his open-back hospital gown, "but we'll try to be as quick as we can."

L reaches down from where he stands beside the wall and takes Light's left hand in his own. The boy tries to pull away, but L doesn't let him.

"My mother had to have one of these when I was little," he murmurs, eyes shadowed, "they aren't at all pleasant, but you'll be alright."

The needle pierces his lower back, which doesn't feel that bad at all, considering. Light lets his involuntarily tensed muscles relax and rolls his eyes up with a smirk at L, who remains hovering over him in his usual tight slouch, like a concerned gargoyle.

Then, it drives deeper, catching nerves as it goes by and Light tenses again, and without his knowledge, his hand grips onto L's tighter than he would have liked for dignity's sake. One of his legs spasms and as the nurse grips his shoulder to hold him into place, he whimpers into the pillow.

"What the _fuck, _L?"

Shit, he realises. He let the detective's name slip. Luckily, the nurse doesn't seem to notice and continues digging around in his spine. Apologetically, he glances up at the raven haired spectre, who hunches over him further and mouths "don't worry."

By the end of the procedure, he is grasping onto L's hand as if for dear life, and he cannot bring himself to care.

* * *

When he wakes up, he is still facing the same blank wall, except the sun is shining its final bloody sunset hues in through the blinds and casting thick red lines across it.

"Ryuuzaki?" he murmurs. His mouth feels dry again and he doesn't want to turn over in case it hurts where the needle went in. Behind him and across the room, there is the sound of a sharp and deep intake of breath as L wakes up, and then a sigh and the sound of him rubbing his face absent-mindedly.

"Light," says L, dragging his feet over to the bed and sitting on the edge of it, "are you okay?"

"I didn't know I fell asleep. I just remember holding your hand and then waking up like this."

L's hand is placed on his shoulder. He can only feel it through the blankets, and that isn't enough.

"Lie down," he says, and then pauses, "please. If you want to, that is."

"Of course I want to." L breathes, and then does exactly that, one arm encircling Light's waist and the other resting beneath his own head. "The doctors, they're rushing your lumbar results, just to see what's up with this fever you have."

"I don't care. I'm tired."

"Then let us return to sleep."

* * *

The lumbar puncture proves that the cancer has metastasized from his spinal cord to the central nervous system, causing the fever.

Chemotherapy isn't working.

Conversations are had with Asadi. They speculate about the effects of more aggressive chemotherapy, talk about how radiotherapy is unlikely to make much of a difference, and speak of medicines to help control the side effects of all the chemotherapy.

Meanwhile, inside his pelvis, a tumour is growing to breaking point. He registers the pain in peaks and troughs, but for the most part, whilst in the hospital his mind is in too much of a cloud to care. His chest is heavy with mucous, another side effect of the medicine, but one he could do without. L occasionally has the nerve to look visibly disgusted as he coughs out what feels like each of his lungs into various tissues and sick bowls.

"Fuck off, L," he says one day, shrugging L's hands off of his shoulders, "if you think I'm so gross like this, you can just go away."

Asadi starts the more aggressive chemotherapy that night, whilst he is still in the hospital with a fever that remains unbroken. L has gone home upon Light's antagonistic demands.

"That'll only get worse for the time being, I'm afraid," she states, gesturing to the bin full of tissues beside his bed. Sighing, he flops down onto his pillow, faces the wall, and tries to read a book that L left behind.

* * *

At just past midnight, he is on the phone.

"L, I'm sorry for being rude to you, please come back. Please come back, it's dark because they turned all the lights off and I'm on my own and it's too cold and I can't breathe and I need you, L, please pick up."

* * *

At six in the morning he wakes up and L is there, breathing comes easier and there is an ice pack on his head. His nose tickles and when he reaches up to scratch it he feels little nasal cannulas pushing oxygen into his skull.

"Your fever broke last night," L says, eating a fruit pot from the cafeteria and staring down his nose at him bemusedly, "I had three missed calls from you. You have never called me so many times at once. I thought you were dying."

"So did I."

"I'm not finished. So then, whilst I was already on my way here, I listened to your messages and I realised that you weren't dying, you were just being a twat. And I've been a twat as well. I'm too cold and blasé at times and I know you know I'm trying but that isn't enough. We need to start talking. You need to start telling me things because I'm trying to figure this entire thing out in the dark here and it is not working. And I just want you to know that you don't in any way disgust me, but I am scared. I tried so hard to not appear scared because I thought it would help but it hasn't. You need to stop it with his passive aggressive anger thing. Stop trying to get me to leave you alone, because I won't, and that's it. I didn't leave when you were Kira and I didn't leave when you went stir crazy and abandoned your family after giving all that up and I won't leave now. I've had enough of speaking in riddles when the truth is that I love you; but you terrify me at times and this is one of them."

"Right."

They are quiet for a while, then. L lies down on the bed like he did that one time not so many days ago, and he wraps one arm around Light's waist and uses the other to smooth delicate patterns at the nape of his neck.

"I'm scared, too," Light murmurs into his pillow after a good half hour of silence, "I'm scared because the chemo isn't working and I'm scared because I can't breathe and I'm scared because it's dawning upon me that I could die fairly soon and leave nothing behind but a couple of paragraphs in some history textbooks, and a very lonely detective."

"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was," quotes L.

"Don't quote the bloody bible at me."

* * *

Light is discharged from the hospital under the condition that he takes several oxygen canisters with him for "good luck" and returns for his treatment as scheduled.

The cast is removed from his wrist at around the time the pain in his pelvis becomes so substantial that it proves difficult to stand for any significant period of time. So they stay at home mostly, only returning to the hospital for chemotherapy and doing a bit of everything sparingly.

Things Light once would have considered to be tedious, the trivial and the inane, seem now almost carefully beautiful in their impermanence. When the weather is nice, they go to the park and have picnics and throw their left over fruit out for the ducks to eat. When it rains, they stay inside and read books or just mull over one another's company. They play chess, a strategic enough clashing of minds without all of the death and disparity they're used to.

In a sense, things calm down. They are still tumultuous, and they argue over the stupidest of things, but they grow steadily more comfortable in one another's presence and in the presence of a looming death.

The treatment is especially rough. In between their trips to the park, there are days when Light refuses to get out of bed at all, or doesn't eat as much as he should or denies his iron supplements. "It'll just make me sick," is his usual excuse, and although it is one that L understands, it frustrates him. How can Light refuse to see that in his body where the cancer cells divide as strong as ever, the chemotherapy can only buy him time and he must not choose to waste it?

The doctors have not yet chosen to give up hope, but neither L nor Light are stupid or naïve, and they both hear Ryuk cackling on the bad days when the curtains stay closed and the bedroom smells like sickness and sleep.

Eventually, though, even the doctors reach the point of no return.

Asadi confronts them one day in her office and says: "The cancer has metastasized too far to be reversible. At this point, the chemotherapy will only drag things out, is that what you want?"

It isn't what they want. They leave the hospital with a prescription for morphine tablets and no future appointments booked.

"Call me if you need anything," Asadi says. An empty gesture.

* * *

Consciousness comes to Light in hazy waves of buoyant morning sunlight which turn to shutter shadows leaking across the room as night time pushes its way into their home. L, who has taken to sleeping on the futon beside the bed to give Light the space to spread out, comes and goes. The morphine takes more from his perception than the pain or even the frequent fevers can, and half of the time he doesn't know if he is dreaming or awake.

He remembers snippets of conversations had, has memories of lying awake at night with L holding his hand. Somebody was crying at some point one evening but he can't remember who or why.

But now, it is the early hours of the morning and L is asleep below him on the futon. Ryuk is draped in the bedroom doorway, watching them with fluorescent amber eyes.

"I can tell you where the book is now, if you'd like," says the Shinigami.

Light nods, already stepping out from beneath the covers, leaning heavily on the bedside cabinet to avoid crushing L's face with his foot as his legs spasm under his own weight. How pathetic he has become. He feels almost blessed that this will be over with soon.

"And then you'll do what I asked?" he questions, once he is out of earshot and following the Shinigami down the flight of stairs that leads to the basement. Ryuk nods, then waits for him to catch up and flick the light on in the basement.

"It's just in that safe, nothing special," Ryuk says, "I saw the old guy put it there when we got here."

"What's the combination?" Light asks, but the Shinigami just shrugs and begins to leave the room.

"You'll have to figure that one out for yourself," he calls, "see you 'round, Yagami Light."

And so Light tries, wracks his brain for algorithms but comes up with nothing that will work on the safe. So he tries important dates, names, anything he knows of in L's past but still draws nothing but blanks. Hours pass, and as they do, the pain in his back and legs becomes so severe it is all he can do to sit on the floor and fiddle with the number pad until eventually he even gives that up and resigns himself to leaning his back against a nearby table.

And then he begins to cry. For the first time since his diagnosis, since this entire saga began, he is crying, and he cannot make it stop.

* * *

Somewhat later, once the tears have dried and he is drowsing up against the table, he hears padded footsteps coming down towards the basement.

"L," he calls, "I'm in here."

"I know," says L, his face popping in through the doorway, "this was the first place I thought to check when I woke up and you weren't there. How right I was, to know that you would come crawling back to Kira and world domination at the first opportunity."

"It wasn't like that," says Light, collapsing to rest his head on the lap of the detective who has sat himself down beside him.

"Then how was it?" L's voice is gentle and without anger, and his fingers once again stoop to play at the nape of Light's neck.

"I haven't done anything. You don't understand, the ephemerality – it's overwhelming. I'm leaving nothing behind, I'm just going to _die, _L and there's nothing beyond that and nothing behind, and the pointlessness of it all is enough to drive anyone insane, I swear."

"What has Ryuk written in his notebook, Light? You always said he had to kill you."

Light heaves a shuddering sigh, closes his eyes and whispers, "I'm sorry. I'm going to take the rest of the morphine at midnight tonight. I didn't want to tell you because you can't be implicated in this, L."

"It's a little funny how much I am going to miss you."

They remain on the basement floor for a while, and the sun rises upstairs but does not shine upon them whilst they are hidden. Plans are made. In the evening, they are going to take a bath together, and until then they are going to talk and laugh and _feel. _

Light tells L he wants to be cremated, rather than buried, and that he wants L to keep his ashes in a pot and drag them around with him everywhere he goes. When L laughs at that, Light says; _"I mean it. Don't you ever leave me alone to go all dusty."_

L speaks of what he might do when Light's death has passed. He considers selling their current house, moving on from England altogether or maybe going to teach at Wammy's for a while. He tells Light not to worry too much, because despite what is going to happen, he has Watari to take care of him for the time being and keep him in line.

They aren't good at being sentimental or at being lovely, but they never have been, and they like it that way. It is nice to bask on the basement floor with somebody you love and revel in all the shit you may feel and have caused.

"It just sucks to think that the whole Kira thing, misguided as it _possibly _was," – because Light thinks he'll allow the detective that, just this once – "ended in nothing. People just died and then things went back to normal and I can't help spotting the parallels between them and me." He sighs. "And it's the same with loving you, you'll just go on from here after today and it won't mean a thing, not really. I didn't think I would end this way. There should be more glory to it."

L scoffs. "You narcissistic fuck."

"Still," he muses aloud, "at least you can't go to Hell."

* * *

"_T__he last long lap is the hardest,_

_And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,_

_And the rest is rust and stardust."_

Vladimir Nabokov, _Lolita_

* * *

AN: okay, so i'm not completely fond of this. it's a little rushed in places and a little cheesy in others, but i had to put it somewhere. thanks to deathnoting on tumblr for the prompt to write this, and thanks to you if you managed to read this far.


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